It's Friday, and it's just about Halloween, which means you're probably sitting in your cubicle eating candy for lunch and looking at photos of dogs dressed up as Darth Vader. Just me? Well, Gearlog has a few
spooky sites for you to check out.
1. If you didn't get around to carving your own jack-o-lanterns this Halloween, then you can do so online. Check out this virtual pumpkin carver from vidugiris.com.
2. It's too late to mail a Halloween card, but it's not too late to send an e-card! Take a look at these Halloween e-cards from MyPunchBowl.com before it's too late.
3. Although this has nothing to do with tech, it's still extremely disgusting, and a great cake for this spooky holiday. Check out Instructables' Brain Cake.
4. Thanks to Popular Mechanics, you can spy on those hooligans coming to toilet-paper your house, or steal your Halloween decorations with this DIY pumpkin surveillance camera.
5. Spruce up your computer with a flashy Halloween desktop. (Via LifeHacker)
6. It might be a little too late for this year, but you can always get an early start for next Halloween: Check out the Pumpkin Pal Stake (pictured above) which lights up your jack-o-lantern by sticking the stake directly in the pumpkin.
"It's like an omelet, everyone finds their own way to do it," Adam Savage answers. It's not quite the response I was expecting. I was thinking something more along the lines of 'study hard and stay in school,' when asking the MythBusters star how one goes about breaking into the special effects game.
Judging from Savage and co-host Jamie Hyneman's extremely different resumes, however, the whole egg analogy seems spot on. "I wanted to work in special effects since I was 11 and Star Wars came out," Savage tells me, seated across from me in his San Diego hotel suite. "I tried in several different ways in several different situations where the pay was really crappy and people were real jerks, and ended up forgetting about it until Jamie called me and working with people I liked, doing things that I enjoyed changed it."
Jamie's resume, on the other hand, reads like a plot summary of Factotum, having worked as a diving instructor in the Caribbean, lived on a farm, been employed as a cook, done construction, and even owning a pet store.
"In my case it I've done a lot of different things and at one point I sat down to decide what it was that I actually wanted," he tells me. "By then I realized that it was actually possible to earn a living doing something that was fun. I learned that routines are not fun. I started looking around, and there aren't that many vocations that meet that criteria. Special effects was one. I started methodically getting my foot in the door by cleaning the shop. I quickly rose to the top and had my own shop."
"Congo" is the name of AMD's next "ultrathin" platform, but it's also the name of one of the African regions torn by violence and poverty. For this reason, AMD is considering using the name "2UT" as a replacement code name for the platform, chief markting officer Nigel Dessau tweeted on June 22.
In a followup blog, Dessau explained that he had heard a presentation at the D7 conference describing the conflict.
Power users running low on desktop space now have some breathing room with the introduction of AVADirect.com and GTR Tech's small form factor GT3 case. Despite its smaller size, the case uses the full ATX form factor, ensuring compatibility with a majority of motherboards and components. The case will take up only 25% of the footprint of mid-tower computer cases and will be substantially easier to transport, AVADirect.com said. In addition, the company will be selling full systems based on the new case, as well as the case itself, on their website.
Though the GT3 might be the first full ATX case in a small form factor, Falcon Northwest also offers a small, turbo-charged gaming PC running in a microATX case. Those looking for the smallest case regardless of price would do well to take a look at Falcon's offering, but if you just want something smaller than you're used to without sacrificing compatibility, the GT3 might be the best choice. For gamers looking for a little bit more space and portability, the GT3 is available for your next LAN party for $179.20 (chassis only).
Tired of your co-workers barging in your office when you're on deadline or disturbing you while you're on the phone? Then I know what you need: the CubeGuard. It's a retractable banner that displays a message for when you don't want to be disturbed.
The CubeGuard comes in two varieties, with an assortment of background designs: CubeGuard Standard and Build Your Own. The CubeGuard Standard comes with a preprinted message, including "Please Do Not Disturb," "Out Of The Office," and "Working From Home." Build Your Own lets you create a custom message. Each CubeGuard fits entryways up to 50 inches and comes with Velcro and magnets for easy hanging.
CubeGuard was nice enough to send a few of us here at Gearlog personalized messages for hanging up in our offices and cubicles. Find out what we thought of these banners, after the jump.
The Hubble Space Telescope has certainly been in the news this past week. Astronauts from Shuttle Atlantis stopped by for a billion dollars worth of refurbishing, hopefully succeeding in giving Hubble another decade of exquisite observation. Though in-orbit repairs were anticipated and designed into Hubble's physical structure this mission saw some work no one ever expected--and it looks like it worked!
It's an incredibly dangerous job which few Gearlog readers would turn down. Imagine a chance to do some fix-it work while traveling at 17,000+ mph at 350 miles above the Earth's surface. Wow!
Of course most of us will never get to Hubble, but you can build your own. There are instructions to roll-your-own at Hubblesite.org.
Make a scale model of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope using easy-to-find supplies and our printable materials.
These models aren't working telescopes - you can't peer at the sky with them. But they can give you an up-close look at the telescope's structure and a challenging project to engage your model-making skills.
Detailed instructions are available for models using PVC (low detail, average difficulty) and paper (two sets of plans including a highly detailed but very complex model). Though I am not personally licensed for powertools, a more coordinated builder should be able to take the detailed instructions and build a model of true beauty. It's the next best thing to being there.
Talk about a geek in training. This lucky baby has her very own iPhone! It's made of wood, of course, but hey, it's an iPhone! Plus, it won't suffer any serious damage should she get the urge to chew on it. And that, my friend, is exactly the point.
Flickr-user cjonesgo, who carved the toy--which he has aptly named the iPhoney--by hand, explains:
Some good friends have a teething baby and there is nothing she wants
more than to get her hands on Dad's iPhone. This is an attempt to find
an acceptable substitute...
All in all it took about 4 hours to
make. I probably could have done it in less, but I had a very
discerning client. Everything had to be perfect!
It's all
natural, nearly indestructible, and just a neat thing to have around.
The best thing about this project is, of course, the smiling baby. The
worst thing is that I don't even have a an iPhone of my own and this
has given me a serious case of iPhone envy!
Now I have to make one for myself, because I am jealous of a baby.
It's easy to get HD content on your home theater PC, but as soon as the content becomes encrypted--which increasingly more and more of it is--you'll need a CableCard-based PC. And CableCards only come in new PCs. In other words, to get HBO on your PC you'll need to buy a new PC. Thank god for DanITMan, who's devised a way to hack the BIOS on your PC to make it CableCard-compliant, letting you add one of the tuners to your current PC. The technique ain't easy, however, so we point you to EngadgetHD's Ben Drawbaugh. Drawbaugh, who also wrote pretty much the definitive guide to downloading and importing HD into Windows Media Center, just posted a great story on how to install a CableCARD tuner in your DIY Media Center.
Drawbaugh notes, "This doesn't really require any hacking, or anything illegal for that matter--we're not lawyers--but it isn't cheap. The internal version of the ATI Digital Cable Tuner pictured above can be found new on eBay for about $195, or new from PC vendors like Cannon PC for just under $300." In my eyes, replacing your PC's BIOS with something else to add a verboten feature is the definition of hacking, but I'm not one to quibble. If you have an HTPC and you feel up to the challenge, follow his step by step guide and let us know whether you're successful.
Our ubergeek cousins at ExtremeTech just picked a winner in a very cool competition. Case mods give DIY techies a chance to let their inner artists take the reins, and the top 4 entries really proved that out. Taking top honors was video editor Will Urbina of Novato, CA: His CinematographHD case mod, shown above, combines amazing design with very useful function--it's a customized, all-in-one machine created specifically for his profession. As Urbina wrote:
What makes this system special is that It not only houses a full sized ATX motherboard as well as up to 5 3.5" Hard drives, but it also houses 2x 22" LCD displays, 10W stereo speakers, 5.25" optical drive, and even has a storage area to transport its keyboard and mouse. The only thing you will need to find at your new work area is an electrical socket.
Check out ET's slideshow of the CinematographHD and check out the other winners at ExtremeTech.com.
Completely hand-built in just 18 days, this amazing mod began when a man named Valeri watched Wall-E, Disney and Pixar's 2008 animated hit:
I was impressed by the
image of a small, very lonely robot who is struggling alone with a
whole army of fellow that I decided to make a computer corpus of my
favorite hero.
So he headed to the machine shop and got to work. There, he cut, milled, drilled, and filed every piece of the lovable little robot out of metal, paying remarkable attention to even the tiniest of details. The resulting 19 pages of in-process photographs show the truly astounding craftsmanship that went into creating the final piece.
Perhaps for his next project, an external-drive Eva is in order?
Uh-oh. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that "cyberspies" from China, Russia, and elsewhere infiltrated the United States electric system, mapping our power grid and, "[leaving] behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system."
While the spies didn't damage the grid, the national security officials who made the information public suggest that they may be able to so during a war or crisis. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," one former official told the paper, adding, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."
The White House is looking into ways to shield the grid from attacks.
For all of you CS4 power users out there--I just built the Ultimate CS4 PC over at PCMag.com.
You ever try to open 10 high-res pictures in Photoshop at once and have your PC grinds to halt? For about 4 grand, I can make sure that never happens to you again. The secret is in the RAM. With 32-bit Windows, your machine can't use more than 4GB of RAM, no matter how many sticks you've got in there. If you bulk up your OS to 64-bit Windows, though, you can pretty much use all the RAM you can cram into your motherboard.
I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve that you can use to build your own crack CS4 system or just to upgrade your PC. I'll also suggest some pretty cool peripherals, like the Wacom Intuous 4 graphics tablet, that let you do away with the keyboard altogether when using Photoshop.
At Gearlog, we strive to stay on the cutting edge of technology. And sometimes that means going outside the normal channels to go find it.
This week we ventured into Chinatown, a community known for being on the front line in various forms of research, from genetic to historical meteorology. We found a cute little solar-powered "Winnie the Pooh" bobblehead. A cursory search of the Web found no such product, so I think we really scored here: It looks like we've stumbled upon a prototype toy that we are not supposed to have.
After a quick consult with our legal department, we've decided to ignore the almost certain legal action that will result and proceed with this exclusive hands-on preview of the new solar-powered bobblehead bear.
Gearlog readers certainly already know that they should be performing regular backups and that off-site backup is the best way to go. Sure, there's a monthly charge, but an external hard drive won't protect your data in case of fire, flood, or theft.
One of the best solutions around is Mozy, which offers a 2GB free account, a $4.95 per month unlimited storage personal account, both Windows and Mac compatibility, and perfectly simple controls. The interface makes it easy to check off what you want saved, and the software does the rest.
Mozy has just announced three important new features for its Windows client. It now offers search functionality on the restore tab, so you can find the file you want; you can restore based on file type (so you can restore all of your photos, for example, regardless of where they're stored); and it now transitions easily to a new computer (so you don't need to re-upload your files).
Get started with the free version, at least, and see if Mozy is right for you.
Spring cleaning should include more than clearing out the garage and sweeping up the floor. Your PC and other gadgets need tidying up as well. Luckily, Do-It-Yourself expert Dan Evans can walk you through how to clean your monitor, PC chassis, internal fan, printer, and digital camera, in a step-by-step photo guide.
You'll learn the specific cleaning tools you need to use on your beloved gadgets and exactly how to use them to clean without damaging your electronics. So roll-up your sleeves and find out how to give your PC and other gadgets a pristine cleaning with our illustrated guide on PCMag.com.
It's Friday, and it's just about Halloween, which means you're probably sitting in your cubicle eating candy for lunch and looking at photos of 
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Spring cleaning should include more than clearing out the garage and sweeping up the floor. Your PC and other gadgets need tidying up as well. Luckily, Do-It-Yourself expert Dan Evans can walk you through how to clean your monitor, PC chassis, internal fan, printer, and digital camera, in a step-by-step photo guide.
